The effect of fluid viscoelasticity on swimming microorganisms is a subject of great interest in the biofluids community.
A major focus of studies on swimming in viscoelastic media is on the complexity of the impacts that viscoelasticity can have on swimming speeds, depending on the situation.
In experimental settings and in computational models, viscoelastic effects have been shown to hinder swimming [1]},
enhance swimming [2]}, [3]}, [4]}, [5]}, [6]}, or both hinder and enhance swimming depending on factors such as the kinematics of the swimmer [7]}, [8]}, [9]}, [10]}, [11]}. Many studies emphasize the non-monotonic dependence of swimming speed on parameters relating to fluid viscoelasticity [12]}, [13]}, [14]}, [15]}, [16]}.
Much of this prior work is either experimental, e.g. [1]}, or based on computational models which couple an equation for curve evolution with bulk viscoelastic fluid equations (such as Oldroyd-B) via, e.g. the immersed boundary method [18]}, [19]}, [10]}, [15]}.
